The present invention relates generally to electronic interactive program guides (IPGs), and more particularly to a system for managing and displaying multiple IPGs.
The earliest versions of on-screen electronic program guides (EPG) provided for the storage of program schedule information in an electronic memory connected to a television (TV) receiver and generally provided for the on-screen formatting and display of the program schedule information on the TV screen. The early EPGs typically overlaid the TV programming and were extremely limited as to viewer interaction.
Later EPGs provided improvements in viewer EPG interaction and also provided a Picture-In-Guide (xe2x80x9cPIGxe2x80x9d) display of the TV program simultaneous with the display of the EPG. International Application No. PCT/US95/11173 (International Publication No. WO 96/07270), the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein for all purposes, illustrates such an improvement. However, each of these IPGs requires a set-top box or a computer. Thus, in a household with several TV sets, several set-top boxes are needed. This increases the cost of having multiple TV sets in a house. Additionally, different users with different TV watching tastes and habits do not have the flexibility of customizing an IPG to their needs. Furthermore, it is difficult and time-consuming for parents to exercise parental control over several IPGs that are not related to and do not communicate with each other.
Therefore, there is a need for a multiple IPG system in a single set-top box or a single computer wherein the IPGs share some data and are capable of notifying users of any competing and conflicting resources. There is also a need for a centralized parental control over the multiple IPGs.
The present invention relates to a multiple IPG system. Embodied in a single set-top box, the system provides different TV programming and different IPGs to several different users respectively. The single set-top box is capable of providing programming and scheduling data to several different TV sets. Moreover, each of the different IPGs share some common data stored in a common database with each other. Therefore, a first IPG being viewed by a first user can display data added or modified via a second IPG by a second user of the system. Furthermore, the data added or modified by the second user can influence the viewing rights of the first user. Also, all the competing and conflicting requests for limited resources, such as VCR scheduled recordings, are brought to the users"" attention and displayed or prompted by the system.